Welcome to the Neighborhood! Humans need a lot of things to survive (I'm sure you've noticed). We need food, water, and shelter and it takes a lot of resources to get all of those things. What are resources? In this episode of Crash...

Scientists know that the Y chromosome has been shrinking in size over millions of years, but recent studies suggest that it has more important genes, besides the ones that cause biological maleness.

Some of humanity’s favorite antibiotics are starting to lose their mojo, in the face of smart, sneaky, and rapidly-evolving bacteria. To find new drugs to combat these superbugs, scientists are looking in some weird new places, like...

We don't want to deluge you with information on the subject, but this week on Crash Course Mythology, Mike Rugnetta is talking once again about floods. We're looking at ancient flood myths in the Americas, and what they can tell us about...

What will become of humanity after spend a few hundred years on Mars? What will happen after a few thousand? Evolution has, and still is, shaping humanity in rather drastic ways. How long will humans stop being human and become Martian?

Today we're going to talk about robots! Robots are often thought as a technology of the future, but they're already here by the millions in the workplace, our homes, and pretty soon on the roads. We'll discuss the origins of robotics to...

This week on Crash Course mythology, Mike is talking to you about floods. You may have heard the story of Noah and the Ark from the Bible, but that is not the only deluge story humans tell. It's a common thing across culture. You could...

Your DNA is a part of you, but it might not share your sense of who's numero uno.

Scientists have been turning to the animal world for inspiration for a long time, including for medicines. And many different types of animals have been responsible for this inspiration, including sharks, spiders, and... roadkill.

Now that we’ve started talking about identity, today Hank tackles the question of personhood. Philosophers have tried to assess what constitutes personhood with a variety of different criteria, including genetic, cognitive, social,...

We have lots in common with our closest primate relatives. But comparatively, humans seem a bit... underdressed. Instead of thick fur covering our bodies, many of us mainly have hair on top of our heads— and a few other places. So, how...

This week, researchers announced a novel cancer drug has become the first of its kind to reach clinical trials. Also, new research into vampire bat friendships could help us learn more about animal (and human) behavior.

In this episode of Crash Course Psychology, Hank talks about how we learn by observation... and how that can mean beating the tar out of an inanimate clown named Bobo. -- Table of Contents Limitations of Classical and Operant...

The SETI Institute's Jill Tarter makes her TED Prize wish: to accelerate our search for cosmic company. Using a growing array of radio telescopes, she and her team listen for patterns that may be a sign of intelligence elsewhere in the...

You may have heard about a study where researchers were able to grow lumps of neural tissue that showed measurable activity – a little bit like an actual brain. Are scientists trying to grow artificial brains, and if so, what kind of...

Natural selection can lead to some pretty amazing adaptations, but sometimes the resulting traits aren’t the most efficient solutions to the problems at hand. With the bar set to “good enough,” here are some features that arose from...

For a long time, scientists considered the neocortex the brainiest part of the human brain – an obvious candidate for the thing that makes us unique. But in some ways, it’s not that different from other mammals’ brains. So researchers...

In just the last century, we've made an astounding amount of scientific progress. And thanks to some of that progress, we can now share 10 of those discoveries with you in a video on the internet!

Hank explains where that over-simplified image of evolution comes from and what it is actually supposed to mean.

Here's a paradox: as companies try to streamline their businesses by using artificial intelligence to make critical decisions, they may inadvertently make themselves less efficient. Business technologist Sylvain Duranton advocates for a...

BPA has had some bad press, and now we're all wondering: Is BPA bad for us? Michael Aranda goes into how we encounter BPA in our lives and how it affects us.

Have you ever seen a tree with a big, twisted knot growing out of it? That's just one way that plants can show signs of cancer. Quick Questions explains.

Mosquitoes transmit a number of terrible diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, and the Zika virus, but why not the flu?

Usually when we think about animals and disease, we think about illnesses that they transmit to us - like swine flu or Lyme disease. But illness is often a two-way street, and while animals can pass pathogens to us, we can also pass our...